“Seat Suits” Help Ford Study Autonomous Vehicle, Human Communication

For science but also for lolz

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A few weeks ago, a “self-driving” Ford Transit Connect was caught testing around Arlington, Virginia. But there was something very strange about this supposed autonomous car–there was someone behind the wheel disguised as the driver’s seat. The sighting raised many questions. Was it a prank? Some kind of study? Now we have our answer.

Ford is disguising its drivers as car seats in an effort to study how autonomous vehicles can communicate with humans in real-world situations. In a partnership with Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, the two organizations are testing a method for communicating an autonomous vehicle’s intent to pedestrians, bicyclists, and other drivers when operating on public roads.

“We need to solve for the challenges presented by not having a human driver, so designing a way to replace the head nod or hand wave is fundamental to ensuring safe and efficient operation of self-driving vehicles in our communities,” said Ford’s human factors technical specialist, John Shutko.

After rejecting the use of displayed text and symbols, the team agreed that lighting signals are the most effective for creating a visual communications protocol between self-driving cars and humans. Researchers want the lighting signals to indicate whether the vehicle is on autonomous drive mode, beginning to yield, or about to accelerate from a stop.

Ford equipped a light bar at the top of a Ford Transit Connect’s windshield and had the driver wear a “seat suit” in order to simulate a fully self-driving vehicle without actually deploying unmanned cars, something currently not allowed on public roads. This is crucial to test and evaluate real-world encounters, behaviors, and reactions between humans and what they think is a self-driving car.

The researchers tested three light signals: Two white lights moving side to side indicate when the vehicle is about to yield to a full stop, rapidly blinking white lights will appear when the vehicle is about to accelerate from a stop, and solid white lights mean the vehicle is operating autonomously.

The autonomous-looking Transit Connect van was driven on public roads in northern Virginia throughout the month of August and recorded over 150 hours of data over 1,800 miles of driving using numerous cameras mounted on the van that provided a 360-degree view of the surrounding area, capturing the behavior and responses of pedestrians and drivers. The lighting signals were activated more than 1,650 times at various locations around Arlington, Virginia, including intersections, parking lots, garages, airports, and many other locations. Ford hopes to create a standard communication language between self-driving vehicles and humans on the road.

So it turns out there was a scientific reason for dressing like a car seat. But the study still got Arlington residents pretty good. A local news reporter even went up to the van, trying to communicate with the disguised driver who just sped off without reacting or saying a word. Nice work, Ford and Virginia Tech. You punked an entire city and did science at the same time.